Massive issue with balance

>Balance doens't take rank into account. Newbies start with 1500 elo.

Don't new players start with 1250? And my understanding is that somewhere around 1500 is where you go if you play big team games and win 50/50; thats a reasonable assumption for most players that dont drastically alter the balance of power in 10v10 games. tldr; ELO means little and less in big team games than in small games, and less there than in 1v1.

>A newbie gets alot of elo from winning a game. This futher unbalances the teams

Yes, but they wont stay at the artificially high ranking that they have obtained by luck for long if they are actually that bad, minimizing the overall effect. On the other hand, including low confidence in the calculation of ELO for new players helps to minimize the balance-shattering effect of smurfs.

>I think balance should be frozen above 1900.

Would you rather have sfireman or Godde on your team?

nabs gain 2x elo from wins until they have expended the 250 bonus elo.. do they lose 2x as well?

Its more complex than that. We extended the standard elo system so that there is also a weight paramter for each player. Weight represents certainity about player skill.
At start people have small weight and as a result:

• their effective elo is much smaller (1250 instead of 1500 if they have lowest weight)
• in team game, their elo changes more than elo of their allies after battle

It takes about 30 games to reach full weight. So first 30 games those players have artificially lower elo and rapidly changing elo value.